Five Words For Charlotte King
by SilverStarsAndMoons
Summary: She's tiny and blonde and Southern with a core of steel. Five prompts describing Dr. Charlotte King. CharlotteSam pairing. Oneshot.


**Flowers**

The blue-eyed grasses grow beside the wrap-around verandah of Charlotte King's family home. It's your typical plantation house, passed through the family, mortgaged a few times until it landed in the hands of her father, John King. John's an unmanageable drunk; Charlotte's mother, Kitty, is a weak Southern socialite who likes her gin a little more that she should. Charlotte is the youngest of four children – two boys, and two girls. Her brothers like to hunt and spend time fishing in the creek below the house; her sister likes to dress up in pretty clothes and hang around the verandah on hot, humid Georgia days, listening to every bit of gossip that her mother and the ladies of the village have to chaw over.

Charlotte is none of these things and everything around her. She studies blurred medical textbooks at the library, where the lights are bright and the air conditioning's too high, and the goosebumps rise on her thin little arms and accentuate the bruises from John's midnights on the stairs. Her parents are racist assholes, but she likes to chat with the black woman who runs the library and tell her about her dreams. There are always two daisies in the stained crystal vase on the side of the scarred oak desk. Charlotte always brings two more every day that she comes back.

**Keys**

When Charlotte attends medical school at Yale University, she learns to speak without her thick Southern accent because no one can understand her. She fiddles with her fingernails under the desk as she listens to long lectures about anatomy and the structure of human life. She flinches when people drop books on desks and laugh too loudly, flicking hair over their shoulders. She prefers a quiet dorm room with no one around, reading by the light of one spotlit desk lamp.

Charlotte loses her keys in the snow outside of the dorm one night. She digs around with her gloveless hands, feeling the icy bite of the frozen water on her fingers. Just as she grasps the keys, her roommate comes around the corner with her ditzy friends and smacks Charlotte with a snowball, right in the temple. It would have been humiliating enough if not for the ice that cuts into her soft skin. Charlotte drops the keys back into the snow and tells the dorm leader that she needs a new room. Two days later, she's studying in the dark again.

**Chocolate**

Charlotte is the youngest Chief of Staff at St. Ambrose hospital; she's a competent general surgeon who would rather be in the OR, but she can't resist the honour. She daily deals with the people of the Oceanside Wellness Group two blocks over and she daily curses the fact that co-op medicine exists, because cheeky patients come to the hospital and blather on about Dr. Feel-Good, and it's a little annoying when she's trying to treat them the proper way. She went to medical school; these touchy-feely herb-loving citizens of the community did not.

Sam Bennett divorced his wife, Naomi. Knowing Naomi, Charlotte can see why; what she doesn't understand is why Naomi didn't try harder to hold onto Sam. When he interacts with her above a patient's head, all she wants to do is kiss him. She can't stand his cheekiness, but it's sexy. He's drawn to her flinty powerful front. When she does kiss him in the closed room of her office, she's not surprised to see that he's just as velvety as his voice implies. He runs his fingers down her sides and her Southern accent comes back with full force.

"Smooth like chocolate," he murmurs. She isn't surprised to learn that he's from the South, too.

**Crying**

Men come and go. Charlotte has no time for any of them, least of all Sam, who seems to ignore her at every turn; or, if he has to interact with her, is snappy. She's noticed him twining his arms around Naomi again, so she imagines that he's likely back with her. Whatever. She's got a hospital to run, anyway. Emotion and love are for people with no professional life.

She's sitting on Pete Wilder's examination table and she can't stop crying, and he's a little weirded out, so he decides to call in Violet Turner. The problem is, Charlotte can't stand that woman and her false-comforting voice. If anything, she'd rather talk to Addison Montgomery, who at least understands what it's like to be in charge of a large staff of people and engage in surgery all day. After some discussion, Addison comes in and her guarded face softens when she sees Charlotte's tears.

"It's not really about the stress, is it?"

"No." Charlotte sniffs, wipes her eyes on the soft edge of her grey shirt. "I don't know why I keep coming back here."

Sam walks by the door and winks at Addison, stonily ignoring Charlotte. Addison tracks him with her eyes and sighs. "I do."

"I'm such an idiot."

"No." Addison's hand is warm on Charlotte's arm. "You're just a lonely woman."

**Tired**

She's at home with her cat, who's nuzzling into her neck (so what if this is her major relationship?), when the doorbell rings. Dropping Fluffy unceremoniously to the floor, she opens the door and isn't really surprised to see Sam Bennett standing in front of her.

He looks nervous. "Hey."

"What, Sam?" Her voice is its normal snappy tone, but he doesn't notice. Instead, he steps into the house and closes the door behind him. "I guess I owe you a bit of an explanation."

"Well, if feeling up doctors in their offices isn't your thing, I kind of wish you'd told me before."

"Will you shut up and stop being snarky for two seconds?" He covers her mouth roughly with his own and she curls her fingers into the muscles of his lithe back. She breaks away first. "Explain, Bennett."

"I'm not sure where I am with Naomi."

"Anywhere you are with her is not here with me." She's amazed at how plaintive her voice sounds and tries to reach the metal tone again. "I mean, whatever."

"Shut up. You're such a bad actress."

"You're an asshole. Why did you ignore me?"

He wraps his arms around her and she's amazed at how warm he is; like a human furnace, his heat just overwhelms her. She's also concerned with the way her body fits with his; she's so small that he practically cradles her.

"I'm really tired of all of these games, Sam. I've been fucked around too much." The confession is simple and he nods. "I know. I'm sorry."

He's a man, not a God. When you lie in bed that night, tired never felt so good.


End file.
